help needed

[HertsCCTV]

Evening All,

I really need some helpful hints or advice with my business I am stuck and don't know how to grow at this point.

We are a security company that installs CCTV, Alarms, Access Control etc.... I have been on security installer forums but if I am honest they are quicker to put you down then to help you out with hints on how they started and grew.

I am looking for ways to generate a re-occurring income that is based on maint contracts so a company pays an ongoing fee and we attend to fix any issues which would bring an income in on a monthly basis as at present we are sales only and our customers when we even talk about a maint contract they just say we would rather call you out on a pay as you go basis which is ok.

At the moment we state that we charge the following:

£69 + vat for call out plus first hour then £29 + vat per half hour and then parts on top.

Now over time the with more clients my customers now call for advice and help over the phone but that is just creating problems for me as now I find half my time on the phone whilst on jobs and then having to ring back all those that called me when I was on the phone.

If I was charging them a maint fee then I would not have a problem being on the phone talking to them but I feel some are just talking advantage of this as other companies won't talk unless they have a contract.

 

[Christine Hough]

It seems reasonable and fair to charge for a maintenance service, and also for a help line.

The problem you will have is moving people over if they are used to using you for free.

Can you have a premium line for support?

 

[HertsCCTV]

i really wanted to stay away from premium support.

I suppose if I did do that and customers complained then I could say that we did make you aware of a maint contract and you did not wish to take it out that might force people to then at least thing about the maint contract.

 

[tony84]

Why not get an 0845 number? Obviously if there is only you then that might not work.

Or do what i do (totally different fields but i charge for my advice like you do/should yours). Tell them you dont offer advice over the phone, maybe say if somthing goes wrong you could be held liable. You are happy to come out but there is a fee, some will say no, some will say yes but atleast you will be getting some paying.

 

[QuickHomeBuyers]

Get a 09 number and place it on your flyer with a girl.
"I will get it working".

 

[Atilla]

Evening All,

I really need some helpful hints or advice with my business I am stuck and don't know how to grow at this point.

We are a security company that installs CCTV, Alarms, Access Control etc.... I have been on security installer forums but if I am honest they are quicker to put you down then to help you out with hints on how they started and grew.

But have you actually tried asking the question?

 

[gdswebdesign]

What kind of help and advice do you give over the phone? I've sorted out a couple of businesses with FAQ/hints/tips/instructions sections on their websites to reduce calls. It cut their "help me" calls by roughly 30% as mostly the queries where all along similar lines so could be answered simply.
If they're on your website and going through the help section hasn't solved the problem then helpfully to the maintenance/service packages you offer.

For phone calls you could say their is free advice and information available on your website - but if that doesn't help then again mention your maintenance or service charges.

Good luck.

 

[bovine]

Well, I would suggest support etc is included in the first year, then offer customers 3 ways forward - pay for call outs, or have a full service/support/maintenace contract or pay for technical support contract and pay for call outs (possibly at a better rate).

Its always tricky when a customer calls for support, we have a rule of thumb if its a quick query, we will help anyone (because this nurtures good will and they often come back for chargeable work). If its more involved, then advise the customer of the cost to take it further.

 

[fisicx]

Is the help and advice about stuff you have installed or about somebody else's kit?

If it's for your work then maybe you didn't train them enough or it's too complicated in which case maybe youi need to review your services.

It it's about something else then don't provide free help.

BAE Systems charge £1500 for each technical enquiry for their aircraft.

Others only have a premium rate telephone line forcing people to use a ticketing system.

 

[HertsCCTV]

Is the help and advice about stuff you have installed or about somebody else's kit?

If it's for your work then maybe you didn't train them enough or it's too complicated in which case maybe youi need to review your services.

It it's about something else then don't provide free help.

BAE Systems charge £1500 for each technical enquiry for their aircraft.

Others only have a premium rate telephone line forcing people to use a ticketing system.

The systems we install are really easy that is why we choose this kit. We do sit down with the customer and we even give them a manual on how to work it.

It really is not rocket science.

I just cannot understand how other installer get customers into contracts and I have tried speaking to a few but it does seem a closed industry where people dont like to share

 

[S-Marketing]

The systems we install are really easy that is why we choose this kit. We do sit down with the customer and we even give them a manual on how to work it.

It really is not rocket science.

I just cannot understand how other installer get customers into contracts and I have tried speaking to a few but it does seem a closed industry where people dont like to share

Seems to me that you are going to have to spend some of your hard earned on finding out. A bit of marketing research, will deal with feasibility of the idea, then a quick bit of marketing strategy will sort you out.

Sometimes the only way to pull an idea like this forward is to spend a bit of money.

 

[HertsCCTV]

Seems to me that you are going to have to spend some of your hard earned on finding out. A bit of marketing research, will deal with feasibility of the idea, then a quick bit of marketing strategy will sort you out.

Sometimes the only way to pull an idea like this forward is to spend a bit of money.

This is where I fall over in business I would not know where to look in the first place.

I just thought if I could find someone in the same industry that could act as a mentor and show me how to grow my business would be the best.

I mean we are doing ok with the sales we do enough business but then when we get quiet dips, of which if we had the re-occuring contracts in place that would help us through the dips as money does get very low and my bum does start to (well you know!) but then things pick up again.

Like since august we have been none stop and our work schedual at the moment is taking us right up till jan with installs which is excellent as I did not expect that to happen I though with xmas coming up people and business's will not want to be putting there hand in there pocket.

 

[S-Marketing]

This is where I fall over in business I would not know where to look in the first place.

I just thought if I could find someone in the same industry that could act as a mentor and show me how to grow my business would be the best.

I mean we are doing ok with the sales we do enough business but then when we get quiet dips, of which if we had the re-occuring contracts in place that would help us through the dips as money does get very low and my bum does start to (well you know!) but then things pick up again.

Like since august we have been none stop and our work schedual at the moment is taking us right up till jan with installs which is excellent as I did not expect that to happen I though with xmas coming up people and business's will not want to be putting there hand in there pocket.

Seems to me that you are doing ok. There are many around at the moment who wish they were booked into the new year. As long as you are making a good margin and profit out of the work you are doing i'd say you are just being a big girl.

 

[HertsCCTV]

being a big girl maybe that is the case LOL

I would like to grow the business next year though since 2008 I have been doing it on my own and I could afford to take on some more engineers but would like to ensure that I have the cash behind me to do it.

I am just thinking with maint contracts in place that would help me cash wise I have known fellow companies to do well then take on staff and then hit rock bottom cause they did not have the correct cash flow coming in and when approached banks to bail them out told to do one.

Why is not simple to find a mentor or someone in the industry that just says this is what & how we did it.

 

[S-Marketing]

You are quite right, cashflow or rather lack of it can easily kill an expanding business such as yours. If you don't want to spend money on marketing, and you can't find someone to tell you how its done, then maybe giving shorter terms or taking deposits may help with cashflow when you expand.

 

[HertsCCTV]

You are quite right, cashflow or rather lack of it can easily kill an expanding business such as yours. If you don't want to spend money on marketing, and you can't find someone to tell you how its done, then maybe giving shorter terms or taking deposits may help with cashflow when you expand.

Well from business start I have always taken 50% deposit and for those few that I have ignored that business policy it has paid off but have had 2 ongoing problems where we thought we were ok to ignore the 50% deposit rule and still fighting to get our money.

I am all up on paying money for marketing but what marketing we need to go after I am not sure

 

[bovine]

We dealt with an alarm company that charged us for a maintenance contract, but still wanted to charge us for call outs, parts etc. When I found this out, I told them where to stick it when it came for renewal - especially as they claimed we needed to replace the main alarm unit, just because they couldnt work out how to reset it (the alarm had been activated by one of my staff in error)

The contract needs to make sense. If they can easily see its going to save money, they will go for it. But if they only really need 1 call out a year, then its a harder sell. Especially if you are doing some of the things free that you want to charge them for.

It might be worth looking at increasing the cost of the call out to encourage them to go for a contract as well.

 

[Atilla]

I just cannot understand how other installer get customers into contracts and I have tried speaking to a few but it does seem a closed industry where people dont like to share

Excuse me Mr competitor but ccan you tell me how you run your business and win contracts so that i can take some off you.

Nope, can't see the mileage in it somehow.

 

[HertsCCTV]

Excuse me Mr competitor but ccan you tell me how you run your business and win contracts so that i can take some off you.

Nope, can't see the mileage in it somehow.

Sorry but this reply is just silly.

There is enough room for people in this market. Also a former worker or business owner from the industry could make comment if you don't ask you don't get.

 

[Atilla]

Sorry but this reply is just silly.

There is enough room for people in this market. Also a former worker or business owner from the industry could make comment if you don't ask you don't get.

That's just it, so far you don't appear to have asked, just assumed. It is a tight knit industry so little, if anything gets missed. When people make claims that appear to buck the trend people do get suspicious.

I've never had a problem getting advice from others in 'the trade'. Always found the majority willing to help. But that's the key -help. It works both ways.

 

[HertsCCTV]

if you go back to the start you will see that I have been on other industry related forums and have asked for information in polite ways.

 

[Atilla]

if you go back to the start you will see that I have been on other industry related forums and have asked for information in polite ways.

Of the 3 most popular, you have not asked this specific question.

However, insurance anyone??

 

[HertsCCTV]

Of the 3 most popular, you have not asked this specific question.

However, insurance anyone??

I have sorted the insurance lol I did just have liability but have sorted specific security installers insurance now.

I think I have found advice to my own question which is these contracts will come to me once trade body registered with NSI or SSAIB

 

[JDX_John]

Maybe get a secretary to answer the phone instead of taking calls direct. Then you can get her to manage your diary, and/or schedule to do call-backs all together.

 

[Atilla]

I have sorted the insurance lol I did just have liability but have sorted specific security installers insurance now.

I think I have found advice to my own question which is these contracts will come to me once trade body registered with NSI or SSAIB

Don't be fooled by the Inspectorate issue. They are profit making organisations. Read into that what you may.
How much intruder do you do?

 

[tel_]

I assume the business model of proper security company is reliant on the revenue generated by the maintenance contracts to pay for the provision of staff to be in place for repair & 24hr call out ?

most appear to be no contract no service,

We dealt with an alarm company that charged us for a maintenance contract, but still wanted to charge us for call outs, parts etc.

& ?

Collins: English Dictionary Definition (Meaning) of
maintenance
n

1. the act of maintaining or the state of being maintained,

2. the process of keeping a car, building, etc. in good condition,

3. (Law) financial provision ordered to be made by way of periodical payments or a lump sum, usually for a separated or divorced spouse,

if you'd agreed to compressive fully inclusive day & night service plan, & then where charged for something could under stand your surprise!

 

[Merchant UK]

Evening All,

I really need some helpful hints or advice with my business I am stuck and don't know how to grow at this point.

We are a security company that installs CCTV, Alarms, Access Control etc.... I have been on security installer forums but if I am honest they are quicker to put you down then to help you out with hints on how they started and grew.

I am looking for ways to generate a re-occurring income that is based on maint contracts so a company pays an ongoing fee and we attend to fix any issues which would bring an income in on a monthly basis as at present we are sales only and our customers when we even talk about a maint contract they just say we would rather call you out on a pay as you go basis which is ok.

At the moment we state that we charge the following:

£69 + vat for call out plus first hour then £29 + vat per half hour and then parts on top.

Now over time the with more clients my customers now call for advice and help over the phone but that is just creating problems for me as now I find half my time on the phone whilst on jobs and then having to ring back all those that called me when I was on the phone.

If I was charging them a maint fee then I would not have a problem being on the phone talking to them but I feel some are just talking advantage of this as other companies won't talk unless they have a contract.

Why don't you do something similar to British gas, say 12.99 a month by direct debit and parts and labour are free, however there would have to be some terms and conditions, like CCTV would have to be less than 2 years old, etc etc, very similar to the gas people and their boilers. You could also state that a service and check has to be made before you allow a system to use this contract so if you get a dodgy setup you could end up repairing it before doing the mainitainance contract..

Say you get a few, not all will go wrong within the year so
ypu could be within profit after the first year??

Just a thought

 

[tel_]

Why don't you do something similar to British gas, say 12.99 a month by direct debit and parts and labour are free, however there would have to be some terms and conditions, like CCTV would have to be less than 2 years old, etc etc,

okay say they have a system based on a 16 way sprite ?

new machine 2k+
factory service £400
new 320gb IDE HDD £125.00 (ebuyer price inc vat)


12.99 +vat is 30 mins labour,

 

[Merchant UK]

okay say they have a system based on a 16 way sprite ?

new machine 2k+
factory service £400
new 320gb IDE HDD £125.00 (ebuyer price inc vat)


12.99 +vat is 30 mins labour,

Each month for a year, Not 12.99 on its own.

So yes the system is pretty new, can you forsee any real maintainance on such a new system??

Say you have 100 people paying 12.99 a month each month, at a rough guess say you do out to 5 breakdowns from those 100, The rest is profit

 

[JoeTheCarpenter]

The only way to grow is to be expensive. If you don't have the advertising budget to net all the people with plenty of money who don't mind expensive you'll never grow. You will also fail to grow if you are straight with your customers. Business is a ruthless game. These large companies don't grow by being honest johns.

 

[Rydalcommunications]

Dont be scared to make money!

 

[asj100]

I think your problem here is the way you start your client/company relationship.

I would first SELL the product, include in that sale the cost of 12 months maintenance, put the maintenance renewal in the original sale agreement, with an opt out option. (so they get the first year sales guarantee plus another years parts and labour cover). I would discount your usual annual maintenance fees IF they sign at the time of purchase, (incentive to buy now), you may wish to offer a 3 year price freeze... not sure what your margins and operational costs are, so be careful on the original pricing if you go this route

You may want to put 3 levels of care into the original agreement..

1. THE WORKS (top packages)
2. x number of callouts (No call out charges, no labour charges just parts only for upto XXX number of callout per year)
3. x number of hours telephone support.

Your facing two major issues atempting to up sell a client with a 1 year old system. First they think the system will last them forever, partly because you have sold them on the quality and reliability of the system. Second, if it didn't breakdown year one, then they will risk another year and hope it doesn't cost them.

Combining the sale of product with the sale of the technical support is as I see it a must do, place an automatic annual renewal into the agreement again with an opt out clause and you will start to see a monthly revenue model stating to develop.

As an added benefit, you may also wish to offer clients WITH A MAINTENANCE agreement in place a discount on parts.. say 5% or 10% offer above a certain pricing level.

As your main business seems to be CCTV, have you thought about tying in with a monitoring company and reselling that as an additonal service, this would be a small but monthly mark up for each client with no labour or capital costs to you...

Hope this helps

Regards

Steve

 

[asj100]

Sorry should have included this in last post:

Offer an annual service/inspection within the maintenance agreement, that way the client will see an immediate benefit to the tech support, all too often the cost requested is seen as money they would not have spent if nothing goes wrong, so by including SOMETHING for the payment, they are not preceiving the payment as a possible total waste.

Hope this helps

Regards

Steve

 

[HertsCCTV]

now we are getting somewhere.

Cheers for the advise.

What I do at the moment is tell the customer that we have two support options one pay as you go and another which is callout/labour not parts with free annual servicing of the equipment software updates included.

When I point out that for £120.00 + VAT a year (£10 per month) this would be cheaper if you called us out twice in a year on the pay as you go service as this is £69.00 + vat but of course none of this is covered by user damage or vandalism.

All this is based on system take overs as if we do a new installation we provide 1 years support on the equipment free of charge.

All the repair work we have ever done as been not our own customers calling saying that they had a problem which required the CCTV to be working but it was not and they would like to get it fixed now. Even when I present these with a maint contract they don't take it which is daft as it just proofed the point of why you need one as you don't look every day at the system and the one time you needed it, it was not working.

on the other note I have a client in London they rent the whole floor in a block in W1 and I have put it forward to them and they say they would rather pay the call out of which I got these clients when I first started so far they have called me out 3 times this year and paid parts on top and have an annual service with me for £500.00 a year.

(to me this seems daft but how could I moan hehehehe)

The other advantage to using us at present is we only work a 100 mile radius from our office address and we can reach customers within a 4hr slot

 

[asj100]

now we are getting somewhere.

Cheers for the advise.

What I do at the moment is tell the customer that we have two support options one pay as you go and another which is callout/labour not parts with free annual servicing of the equipment software updates included.

When I point out that for £120.00 + VAT a year (£10 per month) this would be cheaper if you called us out twice in a year on the pay as you go service as this is £69.00 + vat but of course none of this is covered by user damage or vandalism.

All this is based on system take overs as if we do a new installation we provide 1 years support on the equipment free of charge.

I think the point I was making has been slightly missed, when you quote for a new system INCLUDE the price for the 2nd year's maintenance cover in the quote, as if it is a standard way you do business.
provide in the agreement an automatic annual renewal for this cover, that way they have to cancel it, not a case of you having to sell it each year.

"Assumed consent".. most people when a document is placed in front of them, will agree to an additional clause if it was already included in the price. If they question it and ask if they can cancel it, I would say yes and offer them the reduced cover level, if they reject that one, then take them down to the telephone support level, if they refuse that, when they call asking for free help and advice, you can tell them they do not have any form of techncial support in place. would they like you to send them details of the different tech support packages you have available... OR would they prefer to arrange a personal visit to their site to discuss the matter, the call out fee would be £69.......

Hope this helps

regards
Steve